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Fraud Detected In Science Research That Suggested GMO Crops Were Harmful (nature.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Three science papers that had suggested that genetically modified crops were harmful to animals and have been used by activist groups to argue for their ban have been found to contain manipulated and possibly falsified data. Nature reports: "Papers that describe harmful effects to animals fed genetically modified (GM) crops are under scrutiny for alleged data manipulation. The leaked findings of an ongoing investigation at the University of Naples in Italy suggest that images in the papers may have been intentionally altered. The leader of the lab that carried out the work there says that there is no substance to this claim. The papers' findings run counter to those of numerous safety tests carried out by food and drug agencies around the world, which indicate that there are no dangers associated with eating GM food. But the work has been widely cited on anti-GM websites — and results of the experiments that the papers describe were referenced in an Italian Senate hearing last July on whether the country should allow cultivation of safety-approved GM crops. 'The case is very important also because these papers have been used politically in the debate on GM crops,' says Italian senator Elena Cattaneo, a neuroscientist at the University of Milan whose concerns about the work triggered the investigation.
This article is going to further cloud the issue and I fear its going to give Monsanto and its ilk free reign to continue their abuse of the local seed supply. The issue has never been about GMO itself, its been about how GMO is used. Genetically modifying crops to produce more, be resistant to fungus, or have a longer shelf life is a net positive and is nothing more than a more advanced form of selective breeding. Its when you use it to introduce resistance to toxic chemicals that you start to have a real problem. That resistance not only allows to overuse of toxic chemicals (to the point of saturating the local environment), you also introduce a form of addiction where the farmer becomes dependent on the chemical. This addiction dooms the farmer to a form of indentured servitude and will eventually result in their exiting the market due to unsustainability.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Probably the later.
Being anti GMO is every bit as nonsensical as being an anti-vaxer. There's all of about zero credible scientific data against it.
Furthermore, the efforts to label it are purely for the purpose of stigmatizing it and shouldn't be taken seriously. The reason ingredients are labeled is to help people with dietary concerns (such as allergies) however there's no dietary or other concerns with GMO food, hence labeling serves no useful (other than perhaps religious) purpose.
Presumably, you are referring to glyphosate resistant crops. If you think glyphosate (or some other GMO-related chemical) is "toxic", why are you arguing against GMOs and not what is actually toxic? Oh, yes... because both the US and the EU regulatory agencies have determined that it is, in fact, not toxic as used in agriculture and permit its continued use. Now, this issue may be revisited by the courts, but until then, the science is settled, at least from a legal point of view.
Saying that farmers become "addicted" to glyphosate is disingenuous and manipulative. What happens is that GMOs actually result in lower costs and higher yields, so farmers that don't use it can't compete (unless they manage to sell into the "organic" market). In different words, what you are actually saying is that GMOs and glyphosate work as advertised.
Face it, you have lost the scientific and economic arguments. GMOs and glyphosates are generally considered safe and they are (by your own reasoning) effective at what they promise to do, namely increase productivity.
Now, having said that, I am perfectly sympathetic to wanting to eat "natural" vegetables without any GMO or herbicides involved in their production. But unlike you, I don't fool myself into believing that that is a rational preference; it's the same kind of preference I have for natural fiber over synthetics, and wood over plastic. And when I indulge in that preference, I'm willing to pay the higher price for the vegetables myself, instead of trying to bamboozle others with fake scientific arguments about "toxicity" and "addiction".
Does it make sense to ask "are electrical circuits safe?" Circuits are designed, and some designs are safe and others are dangerous.
Likewise there is no such category of things "genetically modified crops" that you can treat as one thing from the point of safety, because each genetically modified organism is an unique artificial construct. You could genetically engineer potatoes to contain ricin for example, and that thing would be unsafe by design. Heretofore nobody has found harmful GMO foods because they are the product of safe design process which protects the investment needed to bring a GMO product to market.
Some day in the future it may be possible to do something like desktop genetic engineering. If the cost of creating a genetically modified crop drops enough, and enough people try their hand at it, then eventually someone's going to make something dangerous. This might even be intentional. But at present when you look for GMOs you're looking for screwups.
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Labeling serves the purpose of choice, the consumer has the right to choose to buy or not to buy something based on whatever the hell they want.
That's fine, and manufacturers who want to be GMO free can label their products as such so they can cater to the food religion. They already do this, and there's nothing stopping them from continuing it. The same is also true of Kosher and Halal foods, which are labeled for equally useless reasons.
So you already have it your way, you just aren't aware of it yet, thus you can stop your lobbying for it already.
Caterpillars that eat BT crops sure do. But the story that's usually told is that BT crops are wiping out the Monarch butterfly, which does not seem to be true. Roundup is a problem for monarchs because they eat milkweed and milkweed is... a weed. Modern farming techniques are making weeds less and less common, so they are reducing monarch habitats. But that's not a problem of chemical toxicity. Just that we need milkweed patches to keep monarch populations up.
Bee populations have been hit with various problems, but none appear to be traceable to GMOs as far as I'm aware. Did you have some data for that?
I don't know what this claim maps back to, but the answer is almost certainly that no, they are not.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Ok I'll play with your red herrings (yes, two of them you just used.)
First of all, there is no "frankenfood". When you hear about gene splicing from plants to animals, that's done for research purposes to understand how genes work, and doesn't end up on your plate. There are only two commercially used cases of gene splicing, and one is from one flora to another (that is, for Bt) and the other is to splice human genes into e. coli to produce Humulin, an insulin that is chemically identical to human insulin, which has been used by diabetics almost exclusively since 1982 (prior to that cow insulin was used, and a lot of people were allergic to it and died from it.) So there you have it, a "frankenfood" that has been proven to be saving lives for 33 years now.
Second of all, the effects of lead were well documented prior to it being regulated out of most products we use. However there are no documented negative effects of GMO, except in cases of scientific misconduct, as seen in TFA.
Go ahead, bring more anti-science at me, I'll be happy to debunk your Food Religion.
With an LD50 more than half that of table salt, we should all be very careful.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
You want credible evidence GMO is bad? Go to home depot and buy a bottle of roundup. Read the warning label.
I'm just going to be brutally honest here: You're an uneducated idiot if you think GMO is all about roundup.
Patiently await evidence all possible strains of GMO ever produced are forever guaranteed to never prove harmful.
And now you've just invoked a massive logical fallacy. Seriously go to school before you come here and try to argue this.
The rest of your post is equally uneducated, and not worth a response.
So butteflys didn't actually die fro BT crops?
No
Bees are not sick?
Yes they are. But most likely from nicotinoids, not glycophosphate GM crops.
The roundup resistant crops are not causing other crops to die in Argentina?
No, the herbicides used on the crops are.
You've got your cause and effect all mixed up. Roundup ready crops are indeed a bad idea, but because they have the problem of resistance more than anything else. So the concept of using a food product engineered to resist one herbicide, just means you are buying time.
But if you like the idea of falsifying data to suit your viewpoint, it says more about you than it does about whatever the fraudulent data is trying to condemn.
It's like I always say to the Anti-Vaxxers - wouldn't you like to know what the real reasons for the problem are, not decide something was the problem and declare the job finished?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The problem with labeling GE crops is that GE crops are not substantially different from any other crops, so not justified, and beyond that, it's deceptive. You don't see any other crop improvement technique market for singling out, just one, and you want to label it, not tell people the exact details, not tell people the hows or the whys, not correct any misconceptions, and give no context about the generalities of crop genetics that are prerequisite to understanding the topic. I call that a lie of omission.
You label an Arctic apple that has PPO gene silencing, but not label applesauce made with a Gravenstein apples, which are triploids with an entire extra set of chromosomes. You label a Rainbow papaya genetically engineered with the PRSV-CP gene, but not a Pusa Nanha papaya produced with radiation induced mutagenesis. A tomato with the Ph-3 gene for late blight resistance bred in from a wild species goes unlabeled, but a potato with GE late blight resistance is. Corn bred for higher levels of maisin as a defense against insects is unlabeled, but you must label genetically engineered insect resistant Bt corn, even though it has been shown to have lower levels of carcinogenic mycotoxins.
Do you see my problem here? This is basically the 'evolution is just a theory' label thing all over again. Yes, labeling things that are GE as such is technically true, but unless you are also giving the whole story (which a simple label absolutely does not give), it is also deceptive and just a way to make GE crops look bad when there is no science to support the anti-GE movement's stance.